The Nature of World War I Aircraft: Collected Essays by Javier Arango / 44 Photographs by Philip Makanna

• A NEW BOOK BY JAVIER ARANGO

• 44 PHOTOGRAPHS BY PHILIP MAKANNA  

• AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY FROM GHOSTS

The basis of Javier Arango’s work with the airplanes of World War I—apart from his sheer love of them—was the idea that to understand history we must know not only what happened but also what people at the time thought was happening. His airplane collection was not a museum of inert historical artifacts. It was an active, living reconstruction of the past that allowed him, and the few others who flew his airplanes, to experience what that past felt like to its inhabitants. Armed with that experience, he sought to mine from the written records of the time nuances that might otherwise have escaped an historian. “The knowledge that comes from direct experience,” he wrote, “transcends the particular object and provides insights into history in general.”